


Regrets a' Paradise... No Dice

by somedayisours



Series: Once There Came a Man [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Interlude, Mild Language, POV Outsider, Pre-Canon, Superstition, This is just padding for the next one, Unreliable Narrator, nothing really happens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-23
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-09 18:03:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somedayisours/pseuds/somedayisours
Summary: First there came the devil in his checkered suit, then came the monster he had buried on their hill.





	Regrets a' Paradise... No Dice

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song "People Don't Change Blues" by The Growlers.

When the man in the checkered suit sauntered into the Prospector for a drink everyone in Goodsprings had turned his way to catch a glimpse of someone so very strange. None of them had ever seen someone so... Strip before. It ended up being the Great Khans that'd followed his every step that caused a ruckus instead of the uptight high baller. She hadn't hesitated to throw the lot of them when out when "Mr. New Vegas" couldn't get a hold of them after a couple of drinks.

There'd been something desolate in the Devil's face when she'd later tried to run him out of town like he hadn't been seeing her when he threatened to have a second grave dug. She'd seen enough wastelanders wander through with that same shell-shocked daze to know he was somewhere else and that made him twice as dangerous. She'd cut her losses and made herself scarce instead of pushing him any further.

The Devil and his crew of fools were gone come morning, just in time for the news of what the man had buried on the hill the night before making was its rounds around town. They'd put two bullets in a man's skull and left him for dead in a shallow grave, Doc Mitchell figured the unlucky bastard would live.

She couldn't help but wonder what kind of man the Devil would want dead, she got her answer eight days later when he stumbled from Doc Mitchell's house with a clean bill of health.

They should have left him in that grave the Devil had a group of druggies dig.

"Percy", as Sunny dubbed him, was all smiles. A smirk like that might have been charming if Trudy hadn't seen men like him before. Men that liked to smile while people were burned alive, smiling because the only thing they cared for was themselves.

Percy helped around town willing enough, helping Sunny clean out the geckos down by the water pumps and strip them of their hides. He helped drive them Powder Gangers back after stomping off to speak with the NCR over the prison break, but she couldn't shake how the cold eyes looked upon the lot of them with that smile.

She wasn't surprised when she heard he finished the slaughter of Nipton by putting Legion heads on spikes, that he put Caesar down like a dog, that he crushed what remained of the bull once and for all, that he had the NCR's General Oliver chucked off Hoover Dam, and had the remaining stragglers left behind on Nevada land by their leaders executed. They say he disappeared, leaving the Devil in his checkered suit to keep order.

Trudy doesn't hear any solid mention of his activities for four years. No Courier, no Percy, no monster from the hill. Good things never last.


End file.
